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The Stork

Abstract

Breastfeeding Management for Working Mothers: a supporting service aiming to allow easier and continuous breastfeeding of babies for working mothers, wanting to pursue their careers without the need to cease breastfeeding.

The service is to be pitched to consciences companies that seek to increase workforce equality between men and women and to support their working mothers, whilst preserving good and competent employees at the process and allowing for faster returns from mat-leaves. As such, The Stork is basically the Incentive and Perks Pack for working mothers, thus holding a dual benefit for both employee and employer.

The service is to be funded by the employers and to comprise of two: (1) a delivery service for mother’s-milk pumped at the workplace, straight to the babies wherever they be (at home or at the nursery); and (2) equipment providence at the workplace, including electric pumps, disposable kits for the sterile use of various women at the office and a designated fridge from which the milk will be picked up by the deliveryman.

The Stork is not only a mean by which women can breastfeed longer while not lagging behind with their careers, but it also an appropriate realistic way to reach global goals marked by the WHO in 2016 to achieve exclusive breastfeeding until the age of 6 moths and combined with food (no formula) by the age of 2, in 50% of the population by 2025. The Stork, therefore, has triple-way benefits: to mothers and children, to employers, and to society as a whole.

The Stork for working breast-feeders, is what Gett app was for taxi hailers and what Pango app was for street-parkers: it's life made easier, simpler and faster, in an ever growing race of life.

Video

Additional Questions

Who is your customer?

Employers - any organizations, from public to private sector, looking to promote women and allow for better combination between motherhood and pursuing a career, while also preserving good, qualified employees and save costs on prolonged maternity-leaves.

What problem does this idea/product solve or what market need does it serve?

The conflict between the need for women to be a part of the workforce and the fact that they are a crucial aspect of it, and their natural right to breastfeeding, while formal WHO recommendations state that mothers should breastfeed babies exclusively until the age of 6 months, and combined with food until the age of two.
How are women to pursue their careers and while maintaining breastfeeding, when paid maternity leave in IL lasts 15 weeks only?

What attributes will make this idea/product successful? Why do you believe that those features will create success?

The lack of such support in breastfeeding working mothers is major and evident – not only is going back to work one of the main reasons for mothers to cease breastfeeding, but it is nearly impossible to continue breastfeeding and working without heavy support from the environment and the employers, and the hassle for the women is nonetheless massive. This is an actual issue, not addressed in IL today, where breastfeeding is, as an understatement, highly encouraged, and while formal recommendations mention the need to increase exclusive breastfeeding up to 50% of the population by the year 2025.

Explain how you (your team) will execute to make this idea/product successful? What gives you (your team) an advantage over others already in the market or new to this market?

Seeing that such service in IL today doesn’t exist, I think the first step for myself and the team I hope to build soon, is to raise proper funds, while creating the much needed strategic network to allow the service to be useful (for instance, partnering with Uber or Gett to use another mean of transportation for the milk, or establishing proper working terms with more conventional logistics companies to allow for good, high quality service). In order to get to this point, a clear financial plan needs to be formed, and I thus hope to find the finance-person, with whom the journey of raising funds and partnerships will become more than a fantasy. Next steps will then include, following proper graphics and online work, pitching the service to various HR departments and starting to actually build the clientele.

Team Leader

Naama Karmon

Tel Aviv University

I am an avid breasfeeder that came up with this project as a result of an actual lack of support in working breastfeeders, which I want to fix.
I am enrolled in the EMBA progrman at Coller, own another MA in environmental Studies (also from TAU), work in the sustainability and environment realm for the past 6 years.
Am a mother of two (and one dog), married, live in TA.